Forward
	Purpose and Content
	Context
	Early Years Childcare and Development
	Sure Start
	Early Learning Goals
	Research into the impact of early years on literacy development

Foreword by Naomi Eisenstadt Head of Sure Start

Learning to read is probably the single most important factor in school success, and nothing contributes to success in early literacy as much as early exposure to books. We are delighted that The Library Association is encouraging libraries to provide activities for very young children and their parents. Schemes like the national Bookstart programme have demonstrated how much even babies and very young children can benefit from the opportunity to handle books and listen to stories. Libraries are also rich sources of information about other community facilities for adults as well as children. Sure Start programmes are strongly encouraged to link with their local libraries, and from April will be working towards a target which asks them to increase the use parents of young children make of libraries. I am delighted that local libraries are being encouraged to welcome very young children. 

Purpose and Content

The aim of this pack is to provide librarians across the UK with:

• The background to current developments in the early years agenda, to allow them to feel secure in partnerships with other professionals offering services to early years
• A PowerPoint presentation which they can customise and use to present to local partnerships to secure their position within local projects

The production of this pack coincides with the National Campaign for Reading's "Getting a Head Start" promotion, which aims to highlight the importance of reading during early years. We hope that libraries will use the promotion as an opportunity to approach partnerships, explain (possibly with the help of the enclosed presentation) the contribution which libraries make to early development and assert the importance of libraries as a key partner in early years initiatives.

We want every Early Years Childcare and Development Partnership and every Sure Start Partnership to include a library representative.

The background notes are made up of 5 sections:

• Context
• Early Years Childcare and Development Partnerships
• Sure Start
• Early Learning Goals
• Research into the impact of early years on literacy development

The powerpoint presentation is made up of slides with supporting notes. It is hoped that each authority who wishes to use the presentation will customise the slides to profile the strengths of the library service within the authority. 


1. CONTEXT

The government has highlighted early years as a priority for a number of key reasons:

• Child poverty is a major concern - 600,000 children under 3 live in poverty in the UK, however only 1 in 14 children from low income families are in receipt of a free or subsidised childcare places. (source: Daycare Trust Report, March 2000)
• Educational achievement is recognised as being profoundly influenced by early years experiences - 75% of brain development occurs between birth and the age of 2 (source: Colin Harrison, Professor of Literacy Studies, Nottingham University)

Early learning is seen by the government as being inextricably linked with health, the creation of stable communities and social inclusion.

The government is therefore addressing the early years agenda with a raft of policies:

• A commitment to eradicate child poverty. 
• Surestart - a massive early years intervention programme 
• Early Learning Goals announced by the QCA in October 1999 for 3 to 6 years olds at the new Foundation Stage. 
• Massive expansion of nursery provision 

The Early Years landscape is changing rapidly. Initiatives such as Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships, Sure Start, Early Excellence Centres and Early Learning Goals have changed the emphasis of services to young children and their families. At the heart of these initiatives is the government's vision of inclusive and seamless services for children, bringing together play, childcare and education. For many of the statutory, private and voluntary organisations involved in early years services this is a new way of working. It will mean changing or refocusing existing services, as well as planning new services in response to newly expressed needs. 

As a key provider of services to children and young people, libraries have an important part to play in this process. Library service managers have a responsibility to keep pace with these changes; consider adapting or developing services to meet new needs; and to work in partnership with others to demonstrate the contribution libraries can make to young children's early learning and development. 

It is not within the scope of the present document to give detailed information, so web addresses have been supplied wherever possible, to allow you to download appropriate documents and gain additional information.


2. EARLY YEARS CHILDCARE AND DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIPS

2.1 What is an Early Years Development and Childcare Partnership (EYDCP)?

The Government announced its broad policy approach to early years services in May 1997 by establishing an Early Years Development Partnership for each local authority. The role of the EYDP was to represent all the relevant early years interests in the area and to draw up an Early Years Development Plan based on joined-up working. In May 1998, the Government published a Green Paper, Meeting the Childcare Challenge, establishing a National Childcare Strategy with the aim of delivering quality and affordable childcare for all families. The Green Paper recognised the vital links between childcare and education especially in the early years. It proposed that the Strategy should be delivered by local childcare partnerships, building on the work of the existing EYDPs, to become Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships (EYDCPs). There is now an EYDCP for every local authority area.

The DfEE has issued highly detailed planning documents which outline the scope of the plans which the partnerships are constructing. These may be accessed at www.dfee.gov.uk/eydcp/index.htm

2.2 EYDCP Objectives

The main objective of the EYDCP is to draw up and agree an Early Years Development and Childcare Plan to meet the needs of children, parents and carers. The aim of the Plan is to work towards Government targets for the provision of quality affordable childcare for 3 and 4 year olds; and to enhance the care, play and educational experiences of young children. To achieve this EYDCPs have audited existing childcare provision; set in place policies for universal access to affordable quality childcare; and established a children's and family information service to provide information and advice on childcare to parents and carers.

2.3 Partnership

There is no set model for membership of the Partnership, although all partnerships are required to ensure that the interests of all relevant groups are represented, including: the local authority (Education, Social Services, Leisure Services); district councils; schools; local employers; private sector providers of care and education; voluntary sector providers of care and education; the health service; special needs groups; childminders and parents. Most Partnerships have also established sub-groups, working groups or officer groups to support the work of the main Partnership body. These may cover issues like training, special needs, funding, childcare, information and equal opportunities. 

2.4 Where Libraries fit in with EYDCPs

Every EYDCP should have a representative of the local library service as a key member.

This is because: 

• Libraries are the key player in early literacy development and can occupy a key role in delivering training 
• It is one of the main roles of libraries to disseminate information to local communities on the variety of child care opportunities 
• Through Bookstart, under 5s story times and other services for children and parents, the library delivers key early learning opportunities

For the library it is essential that it is in partnership with other early years providers because:

• Early years funding opportunities (such as SRB, EAZ) can only be accessed as partners within a consortium
• Partnerships embed libraries' early years activities within the local early years framework 
• Membership of partnerships raises the profile of libraries, and their services to early years, amongst early years professionals and in the community

Some libraries have been excluded from EYDCPs as their contribution has been seen as irrelevant and some libraries have seen the EYDCP as being solely interested in the expansion of nursery provision. EYDCPs will have a key strategic role to play in defining local patterns of service delivery to families and children. Indications from the DfEE suggest that their role and importance will continue to increase.

2.5 The Government's new investment in toy libraries

A unique opportunity for libraries to work in partnership with their local EYDCP has arisen from the announcement on 19 February 2001 that the government is to fund 150 new toy libraries for children living in deprived areas.

Responding to the EPPE research (see section 5), which concludes that young children who are taught rhymes, songs, letters and numbers and who are taken frequently to the library, are more likely to thrive at school, this extra £6 million is specifically being targeted at providing toys, play equipment as well as specialist toys for children with special needs.

Library services are well-placed to make a bid for managing a toy lending service on behalf of the EYDCP. Librarians' skills of resource management, knowledge of books and resource-based learning for early years and their ability to promote a toy library during story sessions, puts libraries in a strong postion to manage these new resources. Alternatively, if the EYDCP chooses to bid for a mobile service, libraries could try to ensure that public libraries are used as venues for toy lending and tie these sessions in with their own under 5s story times. 

3. SURE START

There is an excellent website www.surestart.gov.uk giving full details of the programme.


3.1 What is Sure Start?

Sure Start is a government initiative to tackle child poverty and social exclusion. It is about improving the health, social and emotional well-being of families and children before and from birth, so that children are ready to thrive when they start school. It does this by: setting up local Sure Start programmes to improve services for families with children under 4; and spreading good practice learned from local programmes to everyone involved in providing services for young children.

Sure Start is firmly based on evidence of good practice and "what works". The government's 2000 spending review announced that the project will have 500 programmes running by 2004, the initial plans for £452 million investment in Sure Start for the period 1999-2000, 2001-2002 have been supplemented with an extra £265m in 2202-03 and £315m in 2003-04. By 2004 the project will be reaching one third of pre-school children living in poverty in England, with 500 projects at a cost of £1billion.

They will be concentrated in communities where a high proportion of children are living in poverty and where Sure Start can help them to succeed by pioneering new ways of working to improve services. These services will work in partnership with parents to improve children's life chances through better access to family and parenting support, health services and early learning opportunities.

Following the expansion of the programme resulting from the 2000 comprehensive spending review, one of the delivery targets for the third objective of Sure Start, "improving the ability to learn", is a rise in the active membership of the local library by under 4s. This provides libraries with an unprecedented platform on which to develop their early years services.

3.2 Objectives 

There are four main objectives for local Sure Start programmes:

Objective 1: Improving social and emotional development
Objective 2: Improving health
Objective 3: Improving the ability to learn
Objective 4: Strengthening families and communities

The ways in which these targets are met at a local level will vary according to local needs, but all programmes should include a number of core services, such as:

Good quality play, learning and childcare experiences 
Good quality primary and community health care 
Support for parents and families
Support for children with special needs and their parents

3.3 Membership

At a local level Sure Start is run by a Partnership. Membership of the Partnership will vary from area to area but should include locally-based voluntary and community organisations working with young children and their families, health services, the local authority (Education, Social Services, Leisure Services), schools, the EYDCP and parents. Library services are mentioned specifically as potential members of the Partnership. 

3.4 Where libraries fit in with Sure Start

Sure Start offers libraries an unprecented mechanism for effectively targeting children most in need of our services. Through the partnership base of Sure Start, which enables services to work together, libraries can work alongside health workers, a partnership which enhances the profiles of both services and which is enabling librarians to effectively reach parents and children they would not previously have been able to access. Through Bookstart libraries have already learnt that partnership with health workers can provide an excellent framework for service delivery. Sure Start takes this partnership onto a new level.

Sure Start's aims, objectives and targets which are most directly geared to library involvement are listed below, with notes on the role of libraries as partners:

"Objective 1: improving social and emotional development

In particular, by supporting early bonding between parents and their children , helping families to function and by enabling the early identification and support of children with emotional and behavioural difficulties

Libraries support early bonding (objective 1) by promoting shared reading activities between parents and very young children.


"Objective 2: improving health 

In particular, by supporting parents in caring for their children to promote healthy development before and after birth.

PSA Target
Parenting support and information available for all parents."

Libraries act as primary access points for many health related enquiries and as a health information point.

Libraries have a key role to play as providers of information which supports parental development ( for instance books on coping with a child who is being bullied, coping with bereavement etc.), and allows parents to access vital community information.


"Objective 3: improving the ability to learn

In particular, by encouraging high quality environments and childcare that promote early learning, promote stimulating and enjoyable play, improve language skills and ensure early identification and support of children with special needs.

PSA Target
Achieve by 2004 for children aged 0-3 in the 500 Sure Start areas, a reduction of 5 percentage points in the number of children with speech and language problems requiring specialist intervention.

Relevant Delivery Target:
Increased use of libraries by families with young children in each Sure Start area - this would be measured by an increase in percent of children under 4 with active library membership. 'Active', being defined as having borrowed a book in last 12 months. (draft wording March 2001)

This is the target in which libraries are now being recognised as being a core Sure Start partner.
Definition of "active library membership" usefully coincides with CIPFA's definition.

Through Sure Start, libraries are being offered a radical way of developing, extending and effectively targeting their services to families and very young children. If libraries successfully demonstrate their ability to deliver services and effectively work in partnership, their position in other key partnership-based strategies will be significantly stronger.

4. Early Learning Goals announced by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in October 1999 for 3 to 6 years olds at the new Foundation Stage. 

These are goals for most children to reach and not a curriculum document as such. 6 key areas of learning are addressed:

• Personal, social and emotional development
• Communication, language and literacy
• Mathematical development
• Knowledge and understanding of the world 
• Physical development
• Creative development

All settings that receive education grant funding will be expected to offer high quality learning activities which includes supporting children make good progress towards realising these goals.
See www.qca.org.uk/ca/foundation/elg/

Curriculum guidance for the foundation stage was published in May 2000. It identifies "stepping stones" which children negotiate on their way to realising the early learning goals. It also offers help and advice for the practitioner in supporting the child's learning and in assessing the child's progression towards the goals.
See www.qca.org.uk/ca/foundation/guidance/curr_guidance.asp.

The foundation stage targets are specifically relevant to early years library services:

• They create a learning framework for all library-based early years learning activities. Analysing library services to pre-school children in terms of the ways in which they support children reach the early learning goals can provide a useful tool for self-evaluation of early years services.
  
  
• All nurseries and pre-schools who borrow items, or who encourage children and carers to borrow items will be supporting children in attaining the goals. Therefore in managing stock - books, toys, videos etc.- librarians will want to purchase stock which is relevant to the foundation stage.
  
  
• Libraries are a key agent in supporting parents in helping children at home achieve. The idea of "resource based learning", which school librarians in particular have promoted, is transferable into the early years arena. Librarians should be creating and promoting collections which will support parents by providing them with quality learning material to use with their child. The framework for this learning pattern is set out in the foundation stage. 
  

5. Research into the impact of Early Years on Literacy Development

An increasing awareness of the significance of early experiences in developing patterns of thinking and learning for life is being matched by an awareness of the need for research evidence on the benefits to children's literacy of intervention before the age of 3. "The influence of pre-school experience on early literacy attainment" a paper by Greg Brooks from the National Foundation for Educational Research from the National Literacy Trust's 2nd National Conference (November 2000) presents a clear over view of current research. It is available at the Trust's website at www.literacytrust.org.uk/Research/brooks.html 

The evaluation of the Bookstart project is of crucial importance for libraries. The well know longitudinal evaluation of the 1992 Birmingham Bookstart pilot by Barrie Wade and Maggie Moore commissioned by Book Trust, produced very exciting findings: 

• The Bookstart children achieved higher scores in all areas of baseline testing when they started school than a selected control group.
• Through observation Bookstart parents were seen to interact and support their child's reading more constructively than non Bookstart parents: 64% talked about the story (as opposed to 24% of non Bookstart parents); 43% related the story to the child's experience (as opposed to 21%).
• Bookstart children also showed more positive behaviour towards book sharing sessions: 100% of Bookstart children showed a keen interest in the text (compared with 34% of non Bookstart children); 61% of children asked questions (opposed to 21% of non Bookstart children).

(Source: Wade and Moore "Bookstart: The First Five Years" Booktrust 1998) 

The evaluation of the national Bookstart project is being undertaken by the University of Surrey at Roehampton. At the National Bookstart Conference in Manchester in November 2000 Professor Kim Reynolds revealed their preliminary findings. The research involved a quantitative evaluation produced by the distribution of two waves of 6,000 questionnaires and a qualitative evalution of the impact of Bookstart on 100 babies and families. The research showed that

• 97% of Bookstart parents are members of the local library compared to 52% of respondents to the questionnaire before Bookstart
• 46% of Bookstart case study parents visit the library at least once a week, compared to 12% of respondents to the questionnaire before Bookstart

Half of all the case study mothers reported that:

• Bookstart has affected the way they interact with their baby
• They have altered their ideas about the purpose of sharing books with their young babies
• Bookstart has changed their thinking about issues to do with parents.

The whole text of Kim Reynold's report "Preliminary Findings for National Research and Evaluation" can be found in the invaluable "Bookstart Conference Report" available from Summer 2001 from the Book Trust (020 8516 2995) for £5.


The most significant current research is the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) research that is being led by Professor Kathy Sylva of Oxford University. There is an overview of the project at http://units.ox.ac.uk/departments/edstud/FELL/eppe.html. This research is a longitudinal study to assess the attainment and development of children between the ages of 3 and 7. Between January 1997 and April 1999 3,000 children were recruited to the project and results for the end of KS1 are due in 2001. One of the impacts of this research has been to prompt the government to set up the national chain of Toy Libraries - announced in February 2001. Professor Sylva presented evidence to the Commons Education and Employment Committee on the preliminary results of the research in June 200. She reported:

After controlling for the impact of parent's occupations and education, aspects of the home learning environment were found to have a significant impact on children's cognitive (including literacy) development...at school entry:

• The frequency with which the child plays with letters/numbers at home
• Parents drawing attention to sounds and letters
• The frequency with which parents reported reading to their child...and the frequency of library visits. 

(Committee Chair) What would you say to parents out there? This is on the record. What do you say to parents out there about how best to develop their children in the best possible way? What is the recommendation that you make? What is it that parents should do for their child in those early years?
(Professor Sammons) Lots of talking.
(Professor Sylva) Take them to the library.

Minutes from the 21st June 2000 available at www.publications.parliament.uk

The Library Association's Early Years Advocacy Pack has been compiled by:

Jonathan Douglas - Professional Adviser Youth & School Libraries, The Library Association
Ian Dodds - Early Years Librarian, London Borough of Bromley
Janice Hall - Priority Services Manager, Newcastle Upon Tyne
Lucy Love - Principal Librarian Children and Education, London Borough of Enfield

The Library Association
March 2001